


Capture

by CorvidFeathers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, Abolition AU, Arguments, Gen, Genderflipped!Feuilly, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/pseuds/CorvidFeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire wants to tear down the illusions of the rich and Feuilly is much too tired to deal with cynicism.  Pre-Civil War AU-verse, same as the Magnetism of Providence.  Genderflipped Feuilly as an American-Irish immigrant factory girl and Grantaire as Grantaire except with photography.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capture

**Author's Note:**

> So this somehow my ideas for an aboliton AU expanded from The Magnetism of Providence into a whole 'verse and I have a bunch of ideas for it. This was one of them. I would love feedback, this is my first time writing Feuilly.  
> Warning for nongraphic mentions of VERY squicky injuries that could be sustained from late nineteenth century factory machines and a few brief mentions of racism and slavery.

Feuilly stepped into the cool night air. For a moment it was a relief, a relief to be able to breathe air that wasn’t thick with dust, a relief to be able to hear herself think, away from the omnipresent clatter and shriek of the textile machines. Then the crisp breeze reminded her autumn was on its way, bringing the nagging worries about the added expense of winter clothes for her already meager budget, and the inevitable illnesses the change in the seasons brought. She was strong, she’d get herself to work no matter what, but there was no place for a sluggish worker in the textile factory. There were dozens of other girls who needed the job as badly as she did.

She couldn’t afford to be fired. Her uncle’s hospitality to her younger siblings depended on the money she provided for their care. Her eyebrows drew together into a frown as she contemplated these worries, which did nothing to soothe the throbbing pain that had taken refuge behind her eyes at some point in her latest shift. Work at the factory was simultaneously mind-numbing and terrifying. The movements were repetitious, but it only took a moment of inattention for one of the machines to catch a finger or your hair. The horrifying consequences of catching your hair in one of the machines had been illustrated to her on her very first shift at the factory, when a woman’s hair had caught in the machine she had been working at and had ripped the flesh from her scalp. Feuilly had shorn her own hair short after that, but the image lingered with her still.

To make matters worse, the process of weaving the textiles produced a choking dust of cloth particles that settled everywhere to be stirred up at the slightest movement. Combined with the oppressive heat it made her feel perpetually dizzy and suffocated, which only heightened her fear of falling prey to one of the machines. 

The factories seemed to sap the life of the women who served in them, breaking their fingers and mangling their hands, suffocating them and filling their lungs with dust until they coughed blood, and making them toil from morning to night on a pittance that barely kept them afloat.

These injustices made Feuilly more furious than she could ever articulate. Why should they be starved and underpaid for performing a task that was so necessary? Merely because they hadn’t had the luxury of an education? The men who owned the textile mills made ludicrous profits. Profits that as far as Feuilly knew were vastly disproportionate to any work they did for the company.

It was men like that who infuriated her, men who thought the world was theirs’ to divide for their own profit and pleasure, needless of the suffering of the people. Men who quite happily would divide whole countries, whole existences, in accordance with their whims.

In her eyes, men like that were nothing better than thieves. 

To steal a day’s fair wages, to steal a chance of supporting a family, to steal bread from the tables of the starving, to steal a country, to steal a culture, to steal a home, to steal men and women. All of these things were a matter of business to these men.

That was what prompted Feuilly to seek answers, to attend the clandestine meetings and speeches that were rallying themselves into something focused. Even when her lungs were burning, her head aching, her fingers blistered and bleeding, she had crept out to find out more, to learn why the world worked like it did and how she could change it for everyone.

It was at one of these gathering that she had met Miss de Courfeyrac, or Courfeyrac as she preferred to be known, an effusive Southern heiress who snuck away from her seminary to join these discussions of abolition and suffrage and the rights of the workers. Courfeyrac was flippant and friendly, disregarding personal space just enough to put everyone at ease, but quick to snap into seriousness when the moment required. Feuilly had initially been wary of Courfeyrac, but her incessant cheerfulness and camaraderie combined with her offhanded way of helping anyone in any way she could had efficiently knocked down all of Feuilly’s walls.

Drawn in and encouraged by Courfeyrac, she had begun to attend the meetings of Courfeyrac’s circle of friends, a group that called themselves Les Amis d’ABC. The pun, in French, held their purpose, to advocate for those that were ignored by society, left to starve or kept captive in the eyes of the law. Never had she been more warmly welcomed. Enjolras, their leader, had fascinated her with his fiery oratory, and Combeferre, a medical student, had taken her under his wing after recognizing in Feuilly the same burning passion for knowledge that he held. These friends were almost family to her now.

This did not prevent her grimace when a familiar shabby figure seemed to materialize out of the shadows of the factory wall as she lingered for a moment.  
“Feuilly,” the man hailed her, walking closer. He had a dark, tangled mess of curls, several days’ worth of stubble, a stained coat, and an overall air of unkempt apathy that could be taken as his attitude towards the world without much error.

“Grantaire,” she said wearily, raking her hair back from her forehead and giving him a node, before quickening her pace to send the message she was far too busy to talk. The company of any of the others might have warmed her then, but she was far too tired to deal with Grantaire.

Grantaire was never keen on picking up hints, or perhaps merely ignored them. He picked up his pace and came up alongside her. Up close she could smell the alcohol he was perpetually permeated in. 

He stared at her for a moment, not saying anything. His dark eyes were surprisingly clear, focusing on her and seeming to assess something.

“Do you want something?” the words came out harsher than she intended, but she lacked the energy to soften them. Grantaire was the last person she wanted to deal with at that moment. He was her friend, just as much as Courfeyrac or Combeferre, but his outlook was infuriating. She couldn’t fathom why a man who had so much, all of the opportunities she lacked, could just throw them all away as if they were nothing.

It wasn’t as if he lacked the ability to care. It was that he seemed to take great care not to.

“Reality,” he said at last.

Feuilly blinked, then shook her head. “You won’t find that at the bottom of a bottle, Grantaire.”

Grantaire produced a flask from his coat and took a drink before answering. “My drowning of reality is only an echo of the illusions that those with means like to paint upon the world. Look at the photograph! Look at this fantastic invention that has rendered the crude scribblings of graphite or charcoal or paint that I or any artist may have had aspirations toward useless. Combeferre says it is the mechanism to capture reality, to blind a man with a blank of powder, and instead of killing capturing the moment and pinning it to the memory as a moth to paper. No need for memory, no need for the brain when the photograph can capture without bias, without glorification or degradation. And what do people seek to do? I was doing a portrait for a family today, a family so much like my own I could hardly bear their presence, and all they wished to do was to alter; to fabricate their existence. The master had lost his arm down in Mexico- oh, well then, the photograph must be arranged just so to hide the hideous impurity of a missing limb. The mistress must scold and petrify her children into the perfect dolls of childhood, and the daughter must plaster and paint her face as if she were trying to create a likeness of Aphrodite herself. Only once this piece of taxidermy- for these portraits are only a touch more alive than the portraits we take before a person is consigned to the grave- is complete, I take the photograph. Today, I have developed the perfect specimen of a family, Class: High, bourgeois as the French say, and completely false. A carefully engineered hoax to be put to display for all to see and admire.”

Feuilly had kept quiet during his rambling, thinking. It was muddled flashes of insight like this that had spawned her realization Grantaire’s apathy was a carefully constructed façade over an intelligent, thoughtful mind. Why anyone would want to while away their life drowning their thought in liquor was beyond her. Grantaire had all of the education, knowledge, and opportunity she longed for. He had once attended West Point, and had methodically gone down the list of offenses that could be committed until he was expelled. Just as determinately he had estranged himself from his family, leaving himself stranded in New York with none of the prospect that were his by birthright and only a meager allowance which mostly went to alcohol and gambling.

“So I thought to myself, this is not an image worth capturing. It is a lie. A lie with a pretty face; the worst kind. These families, these bourgeois, they pretend the miserable and the wretched of the earth don’t exist. They exist, they always will exist, despite anyone’s efforts.” The statement was pointed, but he didn’t seem to be addressing her, rather staring out into the distance as of imagining facing down that haughty expression and fiery blue eyes with this pronouncement. Grantaire took such careful, pointed care not to care for any of the causes Enjolras and their friends fought for, yet he worshipped the man and his belief. It was a contradiction that they all were uncomfortably aware of, with the exception of Enjolras, and none cared to unravel for fear of the consequences.

Grantaire’s gaze swung over to her. “So, I thought, reality. Reality is nothing more than misery. Which is why I have come to you.”

Feuilly stared at him. “Me?” She felt miserable enough, but had no desire to discuss it with Grantaire.

“You are the idol of misery, Feuilly,” he said, his eyes taking in her thin frame, her pale cheeks, and the dark circles under her eyes. “You are everything that they wish to forget about.”

She stopped, turning to face him. When Grantaire saw the look on her face he had the sense to take a step backwards. “You don’t know anything about misery,” she said in a low hiss. She had no wish to cause herself further trouble by drawing attention to the conversation. “Misery to you is an empty bottle. You have your allowance, your games, your gambling, your fighting, all for pleasure. You think everything we do, every effort we make, is entertainment. You have intelligence and money and talent, and you waste it all on alcohol.” Her fists were clenched and she had taken another step towards him without realizing it. “You’ve never known misery. You don’t know what misery looks like. When you’re hurt, when you’re crippled by the machines, when they mangle an arm or rip your scalp off, and you have no money for a doctor and no way to keep a job, no way to support your family or yourself and you’re cast out on the streets to starve or die in the snows, that is misery. That is your precious reality, and it is something you have never dreamed of and I am always on the brink of.”

Grantaire stared at her, silenced for once. At that moment she desperately wanted him to start talking about something, some inane classical allusion she could puzzle through and debate with him. Anything other than the reality winter was coming and she didn’t know what she was going to do.

“Misery is the men and women kept as slaves,” she continued, her anger sparking at his shocked look. “Misery is having to work until you die for nothing at all! Being treated as subhuman, having everything that makes you human denied and torn from you. Go- go photograph Bossuet if you’re so desperate for something to open people’s eyes.” She would have said more, but suddenly something seemed to constrict in her chest, and a fit of coughing took her breath away.

It took a moment to realize it was Grantaire’s hand on her back, supporting her and soothing her. She had the brief impulse to jerk away from him and ask him how he dared offer her help; to tell him she didn’t need his pity. But she was so tired and it was all she could do not to slump against him.

His next words were far from pity. “I- I apologize. It is not only misery, Feuilly, that has captured my eye. It is your determination, your… you. You are the opposite of those portraits. You present no paltry lies, no false reassurance, only your strength and determination. It is that spirit that lacks in the specimens I photograph. It is that spirit… many people lack.” He paused for a moment, considering something. “It is no surprised Enjolras is so enamored with you.” There was a trace of bitterness in his voice, but his hand was still on her shoulder, supporting her.

“Enjolras is not enamored with me,” Feuilly said. Nor did Feuilly have any romantic interest in Enjolras. To think of Enjolras that way was inconceivable to her. She knew him well enough to have seen him in more human moments, and considered him one of her closest friends, but there was still something… otherworldly about him. She’d heard Bahorel compare him to an avenging angel, and the comparison fit well. Something chaste and ageless, radiating terrible purpose. The thought of harboring romantic feelings for him felt almost intrusive. Grantaire, however, was immune to this feeling. “You confuse the platonic for something else.”

To her surprise Grantaire restrained himself from argument. “Come back to my garret. I’ll capture your image, and then we can drink to… to the destruction of ignorance.’ There was something like desperation and something like compassion in his expression, and his tone was unusually gentle.

Feuilly opened her mouth to refuse his offer, but another look at Grantaire stopped her. He had been drinking heavily from his flask since the beginning of the conversation, and though his tone was as near sobriety as Grantaire ever was, he was beginning to stumble. She would never forgive herself if something happened to him, a thought which annoyed her for a moment, but he was her friend after all.

“The mistress of the girls’ boarding house will be angry,” she said. All the working women were supposed to be virtuous and moral in their ways. But the mistress had turned a blind eye to other girls’ digressions, and she had never gotten caught sneaking out after curfew before. She couldn’t bear the thought of returning to her narrow cot in her shared room now, going straight to bed to try to escape the ache of hunger in her stomach, and then tossing and turning until she fell into a fitful sleep. If she went with Grantaire he would, by grace of personality or drink, eventually revert into a more cheerful mood and might provide her with some cheer as well. “But I’ll go with you.”

Some approximation of a smile crossed Grantaire’s lips. “Excellent,” he said, linking arms with her. She found herself leaning on him more than he did on her on their trip back to his garret. The ache in her chest hadn’t loosened, and her legs were wobbly with fatigue. Time seemed to pass in flashes instead of progressing at a normal pace. They were making their way through the streets, and then Grantaire was leading her up the stairway to his garret, and then they were stepping inside.

He sat her down on his bed, mumbling something apologetic about chairs that she didn’t quite catch, and thrust a glass of wine into her hand. A few swallows dulled the edge of the pain in her chest, and allowed her to think a bit more clearly.

Grantaire fussed with his equipment, taking careful care with the delicate lenses, despite his shaking hands. Feuilly watched the process idly as he made his preparations, puzzling at his carefulness.

Finally he announced he was ready and she set the glass of wine aside and sat perfectly still as the flash of the photography equipment framed in place. When the light faded, the dark shape of Grantaire hunched over the lens remained silhouetted in her vision.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry- after this Grantaire persuades Feuilly to accept some food and get some sleep. I tried to write that bit but it just wasn't fitting in with the rest of the story and I decided to end it where I did.


End file.
